Antares has announced the release of Harmony Engine - Vocal Modeling Harmony Generator for native plug-in formats including RTAS (Mac and PC), VST (Mac and PC) and Audio Units (Mac).

Harmony Engine is a real-time harmony generating plug-in that puts professional-quality vocal harmony arrangements within reach of any songwriter, producer, musician or engineer.

Designed for songwriters looking for that perfect backup vocal, composers experimenting with unique vocal effects, or any musician needing vocal or instrumental harmonies, Harmony Engine provides entirely new ways to create harmony parts. Harmony Engine makes experimenting with different harmonies so easy, musicians may find themselves using it to explore harmonic alternatives they may have never otherwise considered.

With four independent harmony voices, a variety of powerful harmony generating modes, humanization features for natural sounding performances, and a flexible real-time preset system for harmony and vocal type, Harmony Engine provides easy-to-use tools to quickly and easily produce professional vocal arrangements in virtually any style.

Key Harmony Engine Features Include:

• Four high-quality, formant-corrected harmony voices with independent vocal character, vibrato, and pan settings.
• Antares Throat Modeling technology that processes each harmony voice through a physical model of the human vocal tract.
• A variety of innovative Harmony Control modes, from fully automatic to individual control of every note:
  • Fixed or Scale Intervals: Simply set the key and harmony voice intervals and let Harmony Engine do the rest.
  • Scale Degree or Chord Name: Define harmony chord-by-chord, complete with inversions and variable vocal ranges.
  • Chord by MIDI: Define harmony in real time via a MIDI controller or pre-recorded MIDI track.
  • MIDI Omni: Directly "play" the four harmony voices as if they were voices of a synth or sampler.
  • MIDI Channel: Use four separate MIDI channels for absolute control over each note of a vocal arrangement.
• Spread and Register controls that allows a musician to quickly and intuitively set the pitch range and harmony style of their vocal arrangement.
• Humanize functions that provide selectable amounts of variation to each harmony voice for realistic, natural sounding results.
• A Freeze function that allows a unique variety of backup vocal effects by making it possible to instantly freeze pitch and/or formant articulation at any point.
• A Harmony Preset matrix that allows the creation of up to 15 complete harmony settings and the ability to instantaneously recall them, in real time or via automation.
• A Voice Parameter Preset matrix that allows the creation and instantly recall up to 6 different "vocal groups".
• Five-channel output capability (host dependent) that makes it possible to assign or export the original input and each of the four harmony voices to their own channels for further processing.

Harmony Engine has an MSRP of $349. A fully functional 10 day trial version is available.